Town of Camillus plans to kill geese at Gillie Lake

View full sizeDick Blume / The Post-StandardCanada Geese on the shoreline at Onondaga Lake Park, in Liverpool. Gillie Lake, in Camillus, has a problem with geese that town officials have sought -- and received -- permission to kill up to 20 of them.

Camillus, NY -- To reduce the number of geese at Veterans Memorial Park at Gillie Lake in Camillus, the town plans to begin killing two geese a day beginning this week. The U.S. Bureau of Fish and Wildlife Service approved a permit for the town to shoot the geese, two a day for a total of 20 geese.

Eric Bacon, the town’s director of parks and recreation, said he doesn’t want to kill the geese, but the geese droppings, which could cause a health concern, are covering the sand and picnic areas.

“We have a problem here,” Bacon said. “I’m not a goose expert so I talked to people who were experts in the field and this is what they recommended.”

Bacon said the town has faced a problem with the large amounts of goose droppings at the park over the past few years and the problem has been getting worse since August. He said he talked with a representative of the state Department of Environmental Conservation and was advised to kill a few geese to scare the majority of them away.

“I didn’t want to kill any geese so I continued to research our options,” Bacon said. Bacon said the town has tried other methods of reducing the geese, including wooden cutouts of coyotes. Bacon said the decoys didn’t work; geese were often sighted sitting on the cutouts.

After talking to an expert at Cornell University and a representative from U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bacon was advised to apply for a permit with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to shoot the geese.

“I’m an animal-lover; I don’t want to kill anything,” he said. “Who wants to kill animals? But we have a problem. I’m charged with the responsibility of taking care of our parks and this is what the experts told us to do.”

Bacon said he is worried that the high levels of droppings in the lake could cause the water to be unusable. The droppings are already covering the sanded area and residents are complaining.

“No one wants their kid to play in the sand and scoop out a large pile of goose feces,” he said. “And that’s what is happening now.”